Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

How Many F-22 Do We Need?

Slate had an article, The Air Force doesn't need any more F-22s. "Last December, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decided to stop production of the Air Force's beloved stealth fighter plane, the F-22 Raptor, at the end of fiscal year 2008. This would leave the program at 187 planes costing a total of $65 billion. On Feb. 13, according to today's issue of Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, Gen. Bruce Carlson, chief of the Air Force's materiel command, told a group of reporters, 'We think that [187 planes] is the wrong number' and that the Air Force would find some way to build 380 before the program's done. He joked that 380 is a 'compromise,' since the original plan calls for 381."

It goes on to describe how the justification is China's developing miltary but then describes how while that's true, it won't be an issue for decades. Let's save some money. That's not to say the plane isn't amazing. Here is a video compilation of some acrobatics:

2 comments:

UAV's while great for conterinsergency should never completely take place of a manned fighter. In a UAV you cannot and never will be able to get the situational awerness avalible from a manned fighter. We need to be prepare for the next war not the last war as we have been for so many years. By the time WWIII we will be prepared for the current war and we'll say "Oh Shit! I wish we hadn't closed the F-22 lines" Tell me what happens if we have a sortie of UAVs out after a critical target and the satellite controlling them gets taken out, or worse the data-link gets hijacked.